How to Disable an Unknown AirTag Found Moving With You to Prevent Being Tracked

[Martinpa]

So wondering... if you are on the bus and as you exit, you forget something that has an AirTag, THEN everyone on the bus with an iPhone will be notified since it is moving with them and you aren’t around anymore. (All depending on how long before it notifies people it is traveling with) I can see a bunch of people on the bus fishing their phone out because they all got a notification at the same time...

Similar thing if you put one in your luggage and they put your bag in a different plane (happened to me when I had 10 minutes to catch a connecting flight in a different terminal at O’Hare... made it but my bag definitely didn’t and was put on the next flight), then would passengers of that second plane get notifications on their iPhones?

 

[matrix07]

So wondering... if you are on the bus and as you exit, you forget something that has an AirTag, THEN everyone on the bus with an iPhone will be notified since it is moving with them and you aren’t around anymore. (All depending on how long before it notifies people it is traveling with) I can see a bunch of people on the bus fishing their phone out because they all got a notification at the same time...

This is why I don't believe the "over period of time" will be mere minutes like @KeithJenner suggested. It wouldn't make any sense.

 

[ifakos]

You can disable a tag if it is found "following you", I guess there is a time trigger to identify a tag as a "following" one.
My guess is that it's not just a few minutes.

 

[m2m2k]

LOL, I can’t believe so many of you guys think that a device can track you when it only has a range of 30 meters at most. For that to work the person tracking would have to stay within 30 meters of you. If they stay within 30 meters of you, do they really need an AirTag? LMAO. The AirTags are for finding your keys, remotes, or other items you misplace around your home. They are not James Bond style trackers.

I think the only kind of useful thing it adding it to a key holder. I feel for remotes these are still to bulky, and how would you add them ? With duct tape ? Same for Glasses and all these other smaller items you would misplace. Maybe you can them into your wallet. But thats it. I mean when was the last time you missplaced your backpack ? Or carry-on bag ? Stolen: Yes, misplaced: No. But the airtags are not made for recovering stolen items (30m aren't helpful for that case) and also for privacy reasons anyone can deactivate them (which is good). As written in another comment, I really feel AirTags aren't a good product.

To make them useful you would have to make them much smaller and increase range drastically but then you would basically create tracking beacons which have huge privacy implications and give anyone the possibility to track and stalk anyone else.

 

[matrix07]

Actually there is this photo on Apple website that we can guess more or less the time it took to notify.

So about time from the airport to Golden Gate?

 

[KeithJenner]

We need to see how the alert thing actually works.
From the way it is explained it is initially just a warning that something is near you. Whether you can at that point disable the tag is not clear, but I suspect not. It then says that after a while you can make it beep in order to help find it. At that point you would identify that it is actually in a bag near you rather than in your pocket.

For all we know it may also take into account the number of people registering it. If there are a load of contacts then it may take longer, but when you leave the bus and you are now the only person within range then it may get more insistant.

of course, if you have just stolen someone’s your car then any warning will definitely be acted on.

 

[MattChinaski]

I think a bigger issue is them alerting people on public transport along with you. Worse, a subset of those people are going to be either confused or deliberately annoying and are going to disable your tracker.

“an AirTag that isn't with the person who registered it for an extended period of time will play a sound when moved” so I don’t think the public transport case applies here. I am more concerned at the Tag beeping helping a potential thief locate it in my stolen good and get rid of it.

 

[Martinpa]

This is why I don't believe the "over period of time" will be mere minutes like @KeithJenner suggested. It wouldn't make any sense.

On one end, sure, but he also has a point that too long of a period of time, and anyone could slip an AirTag in someone’s bag and have a good chance at finding where that person lives. (I.e. an intoxicated person at a bar, someone puts an AirTag in their bag, or coat pocket or something... they take an Uber home, which is only 30 minutes away... the creep could then find out where that person lives, and if they show up, knowing the person is intoxicated, could be somewhat easy to break in or take advantage of them...)

 

[KeithJenner]

Actually there is this photo on Apple website that we can guess more or less the time it took to notify.

So about time from the airport to Golden Gate?

Good spot.

In fact there are times there. First spotted 8.50, last seen 9.41

Also, there is a pause alerts option, so you can stop your phone telling you that you are carrying your friends bag.

 

[KeithJenner]

On one end, sure, but he also has a point that too long of a period of time, and anyone could slip an AirTag in someone’s bag and have a good chance at finding where that person lives. (I.e. an intoxicated person at a bar, someone puts an AirTag in their bag, or coat pocket or something... they take an Uber home, which is only 30 minutes away... the creep could then find out where that person lives, and if they show up, knowing the person is intoxicated, could be somewhat easy to break in or take advantage of them...)

Yes, this is exactly the type of situation that I think they are concerned about.

 

[matrix07]

On one end, sure, but he also has a point that too long of a period of time, and anyone could slip an AirTag in someone’s bag and have a good chance at finding where that person lives. (I.e. an intoxicated person at a bar, someone puts an AirTag in their bag, or coat pocket or something... they take an Uber home, which is only 30 minutes away... the creep could then find out where that person lives, and if they show up, knowing the person is intoxicated, could be somewhat easy to break in or take advantage of them...)

Using AirTags is a worse way to do it though. You have to risk yourself getting close to your subject to put your AirTags in her bag instead of observing from afar. And then you'll leave evidence (your AirTags) behind in her purse, evidence that can be traced back to you who is the owner.
If I see a girl at a bar I like to know where she live I don't need an AirTags. In fact it's better NOT to use the AirTags.

 

[bod74]

If your iphone battery runs out on the train you lose connection to the airtag. You then have an as yet unknown amount of time before the mob on the train disable your airtag. Presumably you can reactivate the airtag later else that’ll be annoying.

I’m hoping its at least 4 hours as i wanted one to go in my car, assuming the metal shell of the car doesn’t shield the signal.

 

[KeithJenner]

Using AirTags is a worse way to do it though. You have to risk yourself getting close to your subject to put your AirTags on her bag instead of observing from afar. And then you'll leave evidence (your AirTags) behind in her purse, evidence that can be traced back to you who is the owner.
If I see a girl at a bar I like to know where she live I don't need an AirTags. In fact it's better NOT to use the AirTags.

I think that if you follow that logic then you just conclude that there aren’t any particular privacy issues and remove this whole part.

If you want to follow someone for days then there are better ways of doing it than airtags, if only because they are very likely to find the tag, use a different bag etc.

I’m not commenting on these pros and cons, but would find it strange if Apple have had all these discussions (undoubtedly with legal people involved) and decided that the risk of someone following people for days is a big enough concern to put the privacy features in place, but the possibility of them being used to help follow someone home to attack them is not a concern.

If they are doing it then I can’t see any reason why they aren’t covering everything.

 

[2540497]

The one and only item that I frequently lose (inside my house) are my glasses. Unfortunately, the AirTag is too big to discretely attach to a pair of glasses.

If you visit the Nomad Goods website they have already designed a glasses Airtag tracker and it looks quite clever.

 

[kerr]

AirTags sound rather useless.

Can't put one on my dog, and if I put one in my bag or on my keys, I have to hope that those items are misplaced and not moving rather than be stolen and on the move.

 

[Takeo Apple]

If your iphone battery runs out on the train you lose connection to the airtag. You then have an as yet unknown amount of time before the mob on the train disable your airtag. Presumably you can reactivate the airtag later else that’ll be annoying.

I’m hoping its at least 4 hours as i wanted one to go in my car, assuming the metal shell of the car doesn’t shield the signal.

you want to track your car with this? Lol. That does not work.

 

[kerr]

If you visit the Nomad Goods website they have already designed a glasses Airtag tracker and it looks quite clever.

It would not have been difficult to provide the link: https://nomadgoods.com/products/airtags-glasses-strap

 

[matrix07]

I think that if you follow that logic then you just conclude that there aren’t any particular privacy issues and remove this whole part.

There is though. People following people all the time but it takes so much time and efforts following people for days than mere hours. AirTags could greatly help those efforts. For example, you can easily stick AirTags to anyone car and know where they're going and knows their routines and habit. And you will have time to get your AirTags back before the owner know if there is no warning.
Knowing someone's home? That's very easy.

 

[kerr]

Isn't this more of a find my (person) function?

Do you expect every child to have their own iPhone?

 

[ErikGrim]

Good spot.

In fact there are times there. First spotted 8.50, last seen 9.41

Also, there is a pause alerts option, so you can stop your phone telling you that you are carrying your friends bag.

What we can not infer from this picture is if this is the first time an alert has been received or the fourth or fifth (going by the dots it has detected it).

 

[m4mario]

I think a bigger issue is them alerting people on public transport along with you. Worse, a subset of those people are going to be either confused or deliberately annoying and are going to disable your tracker.

I think the tech will easily avoid this, since in these cases, the user will also be near by. We are also talking about an extended period of time. Also if there is a reasonable number of iPhones, all traveling at a constant speed, but relatively same to each other, it can be easily detected that it is a public transport. Of course there will be edge cases where a safety message/sound will be displayed. But I doubt it will be that often.

 

[ErikGrim]

If you simply want to put this into somebody bag for hours to know where somebody lives there's already a better method. Following them. No need for AirTags.

Why would you follow someone and get risk getting caught when you can surreptitiously just slip a tracker in their bag and get to them later....?

 

[mazzeri]

AirTags sound rather useless.

Can't put one on my dog, and if I put one in my bag or on my keys, I have to hope that those items are misplaced and not moving rather than be stolen and on the move.

Why can't they go on a dog? I would imagine dogs/cats would be the most lucrative potential market for these things. Can you imagine the tens of thousands of collar designs from third parties?

 

[tillsbury]

Good spot.

In fact there are times there. First spotted 8.50, last seen 9.41

Also, there is a pause alerts option, so you can stop your phone telling you that you are carrying your friends bag.

Yes, except that all Apple shots of iPhones say 9:41, so we can't necessarily tell from that. But it is the closest we have so far.

 

[ErikGrim]

I think this whole thread is proving WHY AirTags were so late to be shipped. If these are the scenarios we can conjure up in less than a day then I bet you Apple has spent a long time thinking about every single one of them and more before putting these to market. And the sad truth is that there might not be a good compromise for them all.